(Closed) How much do I pay my wedding photographer?

Ok so my best friend from college photographed my wedding. Initially she said she would do it FREE! I offered to pay and she refused. This was months before the big day. After it was all said and done, we never agreed to payment but it was obvious she was expecting some kind of tip and I want to pay her…just still not sure how much! I was married a little over a month ago and have told her I’d be sending her a check in the mail but I am still stumped on how much to pay her.

She took bridals for me which was about 2 hours. The day of my wedding she spend probably a total of 6 hours taking photographs including the ceremony and reception.

She is NOT professional, just happens to have a nice camera and is really good at photographing. I know she is editing them but using lightroom to fix super minor things.

AGAIN, she initially said free but I want to pay her SOMETHING! help? 🙂

You could pay for her hotel room and/or give her a gift card? That’s what I’m doing for my friend who is acting as our day-of coordinator. Going to give her a $100 or $150 gift card to amazon or something. That way it doesn’t feel like I’m just paying her a super low fee (although she offered to do it for free) but instead feels like I’m giving her a gift for her help.

We have a friend doing our wedding, but he is a professional. However, he’s being very generous and only asking for expense money. We’ll be paying for his mileage, meals, and hotel. Because he’s being so generous we’ll probably include a gift of some sort or give him an extra $100 or so.

She probably realized how much work photographing a wedding REALLY is with all the post-processing it entails. She offered to shoot your wedding for free, so the right thing to do is thank her with some sort of gratuity – doesn’t matter if she is professional or not.

If you want this friendship to continue, the PPs suggestions of $250-$500 seem reasonable (I personally would do $400).

I think you should look around to know how much the average non-professionals ask for their services (I’m sure you can find plenty of ads on Craiglists or classified ads like that) and I would adjust to that. Ex.: in my are, most non-professional ask for 800$ for that kind of service. I would probably tip your photographer 200 $ if the original agreement was that she was doing the job for free.

A fellow photographer insisted on doing my wedding pictures “for love” as he put it! He’s actually a very successful professional photographer with literally thousands of weddings in his portfolio so I wasn’t taking any of the risks that so often come with amateurs who will shoot for free but equally, may not make a great job of it.

I couldn’t let him give me what turned out to be 11 hours of coverage for absolutely nothing but he refused to take any money. So we covered his transport costs, fed him handsomely, and insisted he be supplied with tea on tap! Plus we bought him a gift afterwards.

In your case, OP, I think you should tip her at 10-15% of what you’d normally have to pay a professional wedding photographer in your area for that amount of coverage. So if 8 hours would have cost $3000, you pay her somewhere between $300 and 400.